Clarkson University Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences included in chapter section of The Best Writing on Mathematics book

Friday, April 21, 2017 - 7:21 am

POTSDAM -- Clarkson University Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences Peter Turner has been included in a chapter section of the book The Best Writing on Mathematics 2016.

Turner teaches mathematics and computer science, and is director of Clarkson's Institute for STEM Education. Turner says that publishers print well over two million pages of writing about mathematics each year.

"It's a very nice accolade to have my chapter about teaching applied mathematics included among them," he said. "If I can pass along my love of teaching and learning, that's satisfying."

A native of the United Kingdom, Turner joined the faculty at Clarkson University 15 years ago after teaching in England and at the U.S. Naval Academy. To him, effective learning begins with the approach to teaching.

"Any student in school has a perfect right to ask a teacher, 'Why do I need to learn this?' It applies to everything in education, and the student has the right to an answer to this question," he said.

Turner believes that teachers at all levels should educate students for a life and a career, rather than train them for a job.

"A job is the start of a career, not the end," he said.

Of course, teaching has had to evolve to work with modern advances. Technology enables a much more interactive way of teaching, he said.

"Newton was a mathematician, an astronomer and a physicist -- all these things," he said. "He is an example of why we need to study science in a comprehensive way. Important things are cross-disciplinary, brought together in a teamwork way."